“Scariest Fact You Know”: 50 Posts From A Page That Isn’t Afraid To Dive Into The Darkest Topics

anonymous:
My nephew (through marriage) is a crazy little s**t. Once, the entire family was playing hide and seek. He was around 9. He didn't like where I hid so he flew into a rage. He tried to hit me, I grabbed his wrist and twisted just enough to subdue him. He screamed like a freaking manic. I released him. He then ran into another room stating he needed his nerf gun to shoot me because he shoots people whenever he's mad.
I looked at my SIL and said "Seriously, you're OK with this?" Her response was that his rage was my fault, I had no right to touch him and that I should have just let him hit me since he's "only a boy." I told her, quite firmly, that if her crazy little b*****d ever even gave the appearance of causing harm to one of my children that I would put him down like a rabid dog. Fortunately (I guess?) her husband, my wife's parents and everyone else present told her that she was wrong, her kid was f*****g nuts and that this was a serious red flag.
Flash forward two years. Kid is still crazy but that's everyone else's problem because he's still "just a boy." I'm staying at their house. Things have mostly settled from that prior incident. I wake up very early every morning. So around 4:30, I find myself awake. I don't want to get up and wake up everyone else so I just sort of lie there and meditate. At around 5:20, the door opens. Thinking it's my kids, who were young at the time and still came to get us early, I kind of just glance up. Then I notice that it's the nephew and he's holding what appears to be an AR-15.
Now, I suffer from PTSD from Iraq. So my fight or flight response is triggered, my heart is pounding and I'm basically in survival mode. I wait. I watch. He creeps past the foot of the bed, walks up to my side and raises this rifle up to point the muzzle at my face.
So I figure, this is it. I'm going to die. Today it ends. The only goal I have for myself right now is to prevent him from harming my wife and kids. He raises it up and the muzzle is a few inches from my face. I reached up, I grabbed the muzzle and I pushed as hard as I could, sending the butt into the little psycho's face. His nose is bleeding, he's crying, he's screaming about how he's going to k**l me, how I'm f*****g dead etc.
So now everyone is awake. Lights are flipped on and I see that it's a toy rifle made to look like an AR-15. Apparently, this little psycho s**t was planning to stick the muzzle in my face and pull the trigger to scare the s**t out of me with flashing lights and electronic gun sounds.
I feel somewhat torn. On the one hand, I just broke an 11 year old's nose for playing with a toy gun. On the other hand, the kid had all of these tells that he was dangerous and what he was doing was super creepy and yet another red flag.
My SIL was f*****g pissed. Her chosen narrative is that I'm a mentally unstable l*****c who is a danger to all children. She calls the cops. She insists, despite the protestations of my wife, that she's having me arrested and charged with child abuse for hitting a boy for playing with his toys.
Police arrive. Interviews take basically the whole day. I'm a little worried that, getting arrested aside, I might not be able to leave this shithole and go home the next day as planned because these cops might not be done with their investigation.
Fortunately, it didn't play out that way. See, this little We Need to Talk About Kevin a*****e wasn't just a crazy s**t around me like in the movies. He was a crazy little s**t everywhere and had been for years. The police had a file on him because the school was required to call the police every time he threatened a school shooting (which was often).
I laid out my version of events much like I did here. I didn't see him and have a flashback thinking he was an insurgent. I saw him, I knew what he has going through his head, and I wanted to try to prevent him from k*****g my family.
They did let me go home on schedule. And a week later the detective called me to let me know there would be no charges. He also told me that his interview with my nephew was "chilling" and he hopes that my SIL pulls her head out of the sand and gets the kid some help. I told him she won't ever. And when he's 30 years old and on trial she'll be crying and saying he's just a boy.
Hopefully he doesn't hurt anyone but I know the odds are stacked against that hope.
Before anyone asks, I refuse to stay at their house. If we are in town, we stay in a hotel. He is never allowed to be alone with either of my kids. And he is also not allowed in my house since he was caught trying to steal a pocket knife which he said he needed for "surgery" on the family cat (he was almost 12 at the time).
EDIT: Since I'm getting PMs asking, no, he hasn't been arrested for forced into mental health counseling despite repeatedly threatening violence at school. My SIL is a lawyer by training (she hasn't practiced in many years though she is still a member of the bar). When she can't threaten her way out of a situation, she has plenty of friends who are still practicing who are willing to write sufficiently forceful letters. She also scored an injunction against the school when it suspended her shitberg son thus preventing them from actually suspending him. People like her are the reason why no one takes action on some of these incredibly troubled kids.

DeadOnDeparture98:
A phone call from parents/relatives etc.

doesntmatteryaknow:
The sound of an ice cream van.

spoilerdudegetrekt:
A kid who was relentlessly bullied at my school for years sued the district and got an upper 6 figure settlement.

Aleksandr Nevsky:
Someone I used to have in a support group I once helped run for sexually victimized and abused young men shared with us what happened to him.
I'm not going into the finer details of it but the broadstroke is he was being victimized by a TA. He went to other teachers, school admins, and even police. No one believed him and he even got punished for "making it up to get a staff member in trouble".
It destroyed his personality. He became bitter, resentful, spiteful, and generally hateful of other people. He was improving his demeanor in the group but from what he tells us he just "wanted to watch the world die" at the time.
A couple years later that same TA tripped down the stair well in one of the side hallways of the school and he happened to be nearby. He saw she was badly injured and likely had broken bones and was bleeding from her head. Instead of helping her he literally stepped over her and pretended she wasn't there. Security footage showed he wasn't the one to push her but when asked why he didn't say anything or get help he simply said that last time he tried to tell people about something involving her no one helped so why would they this time?

New_journey868:
My son was around 3 at the time. Kept refusing to go downstairs as that's where angel man was, and angel man wanted to hurt the family

Elvis_Take_The_Wheel:
Not my kid, but a little girl in my son's kindergarten class told me she lives across the street from a cemetery. I asked her if it was spooky to live that close to a graveyard and she said very matter-of-factly, "Not during the day. But at night they all walk up to our windows and scream."

captcha_trampstamp:
The fact that you can live a totally normal life one minute, and someone else making a bad decision on a whim can either end your life entirely, or impact it so severely that you may as well have died.
Case in point: a woman in the city near me had a rock dropped onto her windshield while driving under an overpass. The kids who did it were like 14-15 and they're all sitting in jail now. She was basically unable to care for herself and was an invalid, she later died after the trial.

bonzombiekitty:
Heartwarming news stories that are along the lines of "Little Susie has a deadly disease. School raises $50,000 so her family can afford to buy her treatment for a year"
Like what sort of hellscape do we live in where people need to have charity drives to get necessary treatments without going (deeper) into poverty?
Very on point side note: I tried to write "hellscape", but my phone thought I was trying to type "healthcare".

Swerfbegone:
Went out hunting.
While we were taking a break, he pointed his rifle a my head, paused, and pulled the trigger.
It wasn't loaded. I left and never went anywhere with him again.

cooldart61:
When my friend showed me her money and plans to travel to the state of Washington.
She was planning to steal Edward Cullen from Bella.
Twilight was 100% real in her head.
Last I heard, she had got into some hard d***s